The beginnings of modern interest in folk trades and handicrafts and their improvement acquired different forms. One of them was the organization of various handicraft schools and courses, especially in Moravia, where the Moravian Central Office for Folk Industry (Moravská ústředna pro lidový průmysl) was founded in Brno. In Bohemia it was Artěl, founded in 1908, that followed in these activities, and later Jan Kotěra a Pavel Janák founded the Union of Czech Work (Svaz českého díla). The attitudes of the public and the producers after the foundation of Czechoslovakia was influenced not only by their esteem for tradition, but also by support for part of the authorities that gave preference to Czech decorativeness a an constituent of the peculiarity of the newly founded state. Already at that time it was evident that the esteem far tradition and the interest in traditional technologies is a syndrome of the industrial civilization. In this development not only the artictic but also social questions played their part. The gradual emancipation of women and their increased participation in production and social life brought about changes in family life. The expansion of tourism, sport activities, recreation in nature and other attributes of modern lifestyle was a new phenomenon related to the boost of the free time of the workers and officials. This also represented an impulse for the fabrication of items that differed from the industrial stereotype. Only the second half of the twentieth century, characterized by the rapid development of industrial production and the emergence of new technologies stimulated the documentation activities aimed to the preservation of records of the vanishing handicrafts and influenced the technological as well as the artistie aspects of their lingering existence. As a result of this endeavor the deeree of the president of the republic already on October 27, 1945 established the Headquarters of Folk Trades and Handicrafts (Ústředí lidových řemesel a lidové umělecké výroby -hereafter ÚLUV). Pieces of knowledge of natural resources and their qualities, of technological principles and artistic preconditions for their processing for the use of contemporary lifestyle moved artists, ethnographers and producers to work shoulder to shoulder in a unique way at production of new items that met with an extraordinary interest for part of the public. In the first twenty years of its existence, ÚLUV served as an example of modern management style with an ecological as well as a cultural function. However, in the whirl of the transformation processes ÚLUV was closed down and its documentation funds were handed over to the archives of ethnograp and hic museums in Prague and in Rožnov pod Radhoštěm. In accord with the UNESCO proclamation of the year 1989, entitled Recomendation to the preservation of traditional folk culture and folklore, the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic authorized the National Institute for Folk Culture (Národní ústav lidové kultury) in Strážnice to commence the project of videodocumenttion of the dying-out handicraft technologies. In the year 2001 the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic joined the new UNESCO proclamation in aid of dying-out technologies of folk handicrafts through the establishment of the title „bearer of the tradition of folk handicrafts“, a joint acknowledgement of selected producers. This acknowledgement confirms the knowledge that tradition in the first place is a bearer of technological discipline and the rules of production.
In the 1991 census, 1 360 000 inhabitants of the Czechoslovak Federative Republic claimed Moravian nationality. Even though the interest of general public in the problem of ethnic Moravian identity had lost strength considerably, it has been disputed until today how to interpret this fact appropriately. The author makes an effort to prove, through historical recapitulation of recent attempts to constitute the new ethnicalnational identity of one part of the Moravian inhabitants, that the making of the specifically Moravian national ideology is related only to the spontaneous unfolding of civic activism since the end of the year 1989. On the basis of the analysis of both specialized studies and works of partakers active in the emancipation movements themselves, he focuses on the historical background of the idea of distinctive nationality of Moravians and the subsequent typology of indentifications of the inhabitants of Moravia. For the first half of the 1990s there could be stated the existence of three dominant tendencies in the ways of collective identification of the population of Moravia. In the first case it is the declaration of the existence of peculiar Moravian nation, in the second one the acknowledgment to the „peculiar cultural and historical branch of the Czech nation“. The adherents of the last, third standpoint have no problems to identify, in spite of their Moravian heritage, as Czechs without further attributes. The effort to constitute a distinctive „Moravian nation“ is in this study being interpreted as an example of the conviction that for the entrenchment of peculiar ethnical conciousness it is not crucial the „objective“ existence of specific cultural patterns, but the implementation of peculiar ideological system. Under conditions of Moravian national identification we are thus confronted with the idea that even in case of the absence of „natural“ aggregates of specific cultural facts it is possible to attempt to construct peculiar national collectiveness. The confidence in the reality of ethnic peculiarity than becomes the matter of the inerpretation of the everyday reality. In the context of other ethnoregional movements the existence of the phenomenon of ethnic Moravian identity can be perceived as the mobilization of identity of peripheral community with many nativist traits. Even though it might seem that the adherents of the idea of the existence of peculiar Moravian nation are seemingly loosing their significance lately, it can be supposed that the efforts in its paradigmatic construction and social establishment will continue also in the future.
The various physical handicaps pertain inseparably to the image of mankind. However, the handicappedpersons always have aroused the notice of others and their presence in the society provoked various reactions for part of the majority of the not handicapped. So this theme was introduced also into the folklore. For the closer scrutiny of this phenomenon was chosen the topic of the Scythe-Handed Woman-a girl with cut-offhands, and its penetration into fairy-tales. As a point of departure the Inventory of Czech Fairy-Tales by Václav Tille was used. The frame of the story of this fairy-tale is based on the clash of the powers of the good and the evil, with the final victory of the good, which can be interpreted also as an essence of the basic human desires. The main theme is being presented in eight versions. The plot unfolds in four basic stages (except for one version with three stages only): (1) in the exposition the main protagonist of the evil is introduced: widowed father or miserly father, widowed mother or step-mother; and also the victim of the evil: daughter or step-daughter. (2) The daughter is being exposed to thefirst attack of the evil, and this leads into cutting-off of one or both ofher hands. (3) The girl saves herself she has her own family, but the evil attacks her again through the accusation that she gave birth to a monster (monsters). (4) The young mother with her child (children) escapes from the immediate threat to their lives, in this final stage she cures herself and meets her husband. The same theme has also the foreign version appendedfor comparison. The motive of the loss or mutilation of hands characterizes not only the fairy-tale of Scythe-Handed Woman but appears also, for example, as a sign of disability to reign, see the mentioned Irish example. There is also mentioned the connexion with the sympathetic magie: Čenìk Zibrt observed its manifestations in our country already at the end of the nineteenth century. The causes of evil root in three negative human features: the incest yearnings of father, the jealousy of mother or step-mother and the insaturable miserness of father. The evil attacks twice, but it doesn't win even after artful accusation of the main protagonist. Its goal was to lower the handicapped women together with her child (children) to the level of the beast and then to destroy them completely. To remedy the consequences of the evil some curing ingredient (water) or some person gifted through some higher power must cooperate so that the young woman could recuperate her physical integrity. On the side of good also concrete persons operate, among them in the most of the cases father-in-law or mother-in-law. Th and e social aspect of the normal state is being restored through the reconstitution of the new family. The representants of the evil are punished, but they can be also pardoned. As a general message of the fairy-tale of Scythe-Handed Woman we can consider two imperatives: mother should at all costs save her own child and at the same time she should find the way to secure the basic life necessities. The specific message is the fact thatfor handicapped persons suffering from Health defects their personal misery appeals for its overcoming. The fairy-tale of Scythe-Handed Womanis in this sense mediates a in-destructable hope to those who suffer. In this interpretation the acting characters are not archetypical abstractions but personalities that reflect the reality of human life.
Since 1996 the Jewish Museum in Prague has been researching certain Czech and Moravian synagogues that were supposed to contain the so called genizot (sg. genizah). These are the places where damagedand cast off writings andsynagogual objects that might had contained the Hebrew name of God. Such objects were habituolly considered as needing protection from the incompetent hands. This was accomplished exactly through their retention in genizot, or thorugh their rituál burial. Up to now, bigger or smaller genizot háve been found in Luže, Bezdružice, Všeradice, Úsov,
Březnice, Zalužany, Kdyni, Janovice n. Úhlovou, Rychnov n. Kněžnou and Holešov. The textile objects were disinteredfrom six of them. The greatest collection contained the genizah in Luže that
included also an extraordinary collection ofbig synagogual textile (curtains and mantles) and a great number of personál objects (smáli talii ts and cidakles). Next to this one, as far as the extent is
considered, are the collections from Březnice and Rychnov n. Kněžnou, single textiles had showed up in Zalužany, Holešov and Bezdružice, in other localities the textile objects were not found. The oldest textiles dáte back to the middle of the 17th century, the youngest to the end of the 19th century. To the most important findings of the synagogual textile belongs the curtain from Luže from the year 1652, collection of mantles from the same locality, from theyears 1688 and 1691, or a beau-tiful mantle from Březnice from 1758, with linen lining decorated with bound batik. These objects
represent for us important evidence of the decoration and technology, ušed in given time period especially in the country. An extraordinary importance has the circumsicion apron from Luže, the
only onepreserved in the country, and the collection of cidakles, smáli tallits worn over the clothes, that in all localities také the form of a smáli vest with elaborated buttoning. Also these cidakles had
not showed up in our collections before. Concerning the technologies and textile production, the evidences of bound and vax batik are wery interesting, even though these might had been ušed
secondarily, and objects made from the remainders of cotton prints containing identification stamps of the producers.
Melodies of songs to the dance „roundandround“ represent a marked musical type in the context of Czech folk songs. In my second monography I present in detail its musical characteristics. The focus of the research was a complex musical analysis of 307 dance melodies from Czech collections of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century. Through the use of newly formulated methods of the structural analysis of musical types I study and describe the relationships between the individual struetures and functional aspects of the melody and the musical type as a whole. Melodies of songs „round and round“ are from the point of view of the basic form characteristics rather short, with inner division by two-bar and three-bar units. Characteristics seems to be the tending to symmetricalform that is, however, often being contravened (especially ecause of text). On the level of melodic segments (the smallest unit of composition – two-bar or three-bar) the periodicity is being employed, on the higher levels rather the linear ordination of motives and themes. The typical form A, B and A, B, C, possibly A, B, C, D. The research had confirmed a stable major-minor feeling, possibly in connection fith a fixed instrumentoi support, especially of the backpipe music. Unambiguously the dominant key is the major one. The melodies are predominantly only diatonic. Melodies of songs to the dance „round and round“ represent a distinctive melodic type. The Tone register is usually not very extensive. Priority is given to the sequence of second and third, rare are melodic leaps. The principal influence on the selection of tone material had been exercised by the possibilities of the most common accompanying instrument – the backpipe. Melodies of songs to the dance „round and round“ from the collections and manuscript sources of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century are exclusively of the triple time metre. The anacrusis does not appear in the recordings. On the other hand, characteristics is the inner change of the metre, the so called „swagger rhythm“ (two triple-time bars are in the text declaimed as three binary measure bars, with respective shifts of accents). The rhythm is rich, varied and is naturally related to the melody, text and declamation. In the inventory of the most often repeated rhythm motives there is a clear tendency to two- or one-figure. The tempo was, according to the accessible sources, agile, rapid or very rapid. The detailed musical analysis decidedly confirmed that it should be thought of the melodies of songs to the dance „round and round“ as a distinet musical type in the context of the Czech folk songs. The results of t and he individual levels of analysis reveal certain formal and composition archetypes and at the same time represent an unbiased probe to the whole of the Czech folk song repertoire.
Kubín’s Scientific work represents a 35 years of an unbroken activity, dedicated to the field reserach as well as the theoretical studies. During his field researches he focused attention to folklore studies, ethnography and dialectology, especially in the areas he considered in danger of extinction (like the regions of Velenicko, Kladsko - the so called Czech corner, Střelínsko) or extraordinary in some sense, for example because of their marginal position or dialect (Hlučínsko, Podještědí, and Podkrkonoší). The largest collections of folk prose collected by Kubín are the Stories from Kladsko (Povídky kladské), containing 173 texts, and Folk Stories from Czech Podkrkonoší (Lidové povídky z českého Podkrkonoší) with 572 texts, their genres being preponderantely magic fairy tales, narrative and humourist tales, life-stories and local tales. He interested himself also in the collecting of folk songs, of which only a small portion was published, in a book called Songs form Kladsko (Kladské písničky). His dialectological works remained mainly unpublished, like his Description of the Moravian Dialect of Hlučínsko (Popis hlučínské moravčiny) or Dictionary of the Dialect of Southern Podkrkonoší (Slovník jižní podkrkonoštiny), published was the book entitled Folk Language of the Czechs of Kladsko (Lidomluva Čechů kladských). All of the texts of folk stories were recorded professionally by Kubín, which means not only the text was exact, but precise were also the linguistic and fonetic aspects of the recording. Kubín also noted the character and the cultural and social conditions of the narrators, so we can place him among the pioneers of the ecological method in ethnography. Kubín’s method and his recordings of the folk narratives judged critically in the 1920’s Václav Tille, who was collecting at the time all possible sources for his analysis of the folk prose. But Tille misinterpreted Kubín’s work, because of the different perception of the two scholars of the basic cathegories of ethnography and folk stud ies, namely, the „folk“ and the „popular-folk production“. Kubín's perception of the „folk“ comes close to a contemporary definition from a sociological point of view; considering the „folk production“, Kubín took acount of the functional borrowings, selection and transformation of the borrowed themes in folklore, and through this perception drew near to the principies of the functional-structural method, as were traced few years later by Petr Bogatyrev.
This article resumes the information gained during the fie ld reserach in the Nova Ves locality in Bosnia in September 2000. We were interested in the Czech community that has lived in this region since 1894. They left Ukraine in order not to have convert to the Orthodox faith. Bosnia, thanks to its religious composition o f the time, offered them religious freedom. The Czech emigrants gained their living mainly from agriculture and trades. From their mother country they brought with themselves m any innovations and cultural traits. This text follows the history of the coming of the Czechs, their old and contemporary customs and usages, thier way of living, habitations, health care, economic conditions, social andfamily life. In the village today lives only a small Czech enclave, composed mainly of old couples or widows. This is being caused by the migration of the youth to the big cities, by the mixed marriaghes and the migration of the Serbs to the village. We were interested to what degree the Czech community had preserved their customs, traditions and usages that were brought to the region more then a hundred years ago by their ancestors, what principies are governing their coexistence with other ethnic groups in the region and the innovations brought to the Czechs by these interetnic contacts.
Among the varied folk lore images the image of personified death assumes an important position at West as well as at the East Slavs. The Slavic region shows as very rich in the varied personalities symbolizing death. In the various folk lore genres we encounter persons like Death, Gore , Kostej , Licho, Morena etc. The dominant role is played by the Death. Both territories under consideration closely resemble each other in depicting this personality in folklore. Death often acquires the likeness of a woman clothed in white, sometimes with the indispensable scythe, but also with other atributes. Not exceptional is a naturalis tie deseription of her palaee and the manner of her destroying the men. The character of Death is marked by cruelty, treacherousness, unyieldingness, but also fairness. Precisely the fact of the fairness of the Death appears very often in the folksongs and fairy tales and sometimes even culminates in the repudiation of God as an unfair personality. One ofthe most frequent fairytale themes are the many variants of the Story about Godmother Death. But these fairytales contain another topic - a friendship between Death and the men. Considering the inescapability of the Death, the majority of the fairytales and songs are tinged by lamentation or acquiescently state the fact. Sometimes the protagonists of the fairytales (the songs lack this moment) don't content with the necessity of the Death and try to outwit her through cunningness and tricks. The fairytales in which the heroes are successful end up humor ously, and are seemingly based upon the vie tory of the good over the evil. If the heroes don't succeed, the inevitability of the Death is conformed. In comparison with the East Slavic folklore is the West Slavic more specific in depicting the outer appearance of Death and contains uncomparably more songs about her. However, considering the themes both areas are very similar. People talked and sang about Death, tried to win over her at least in the narratives, and in especial the songs helped them to express their fear, lamentation and pain caused by Death. All this bears witness of the fact that in spite of the stigma of cruelty by which Death had been marked the very fact of the Death was firmly rooted within the human world view.
This article returns to Kosovo immediately after the end of the last Serbian-Albanian conflict that developed into a conflict of de facto world dimension. In the post-war months of the years 1999-2000, however, in this region could be found not only the material, spiritual and especially human losses, but also such war traces that cannot be simply shrugged off as products of war and grandiloquent nationalism. Behind their often pathetic facade could be seen something more deep, more constant and vitalizing. In this case the matter is music, its musical and textual aspect, its role in the everyday and festive life of Albanians of Kosovo and especially the song as a form of reflection of both old and recent history and present State of Kosovo, its inhabitants and its position in contemporary and future world. After closer examination the distinctive world of Kosovo-Albanian epic song is being revealed, built on ancient foundations of Balkan musical and song tradition. From this tradition ste song stems and this tradition it acknowledges. At the same time the tradition is being developed through natural diffusion of all possible new internal and external musical and non-musical influences. The article deals with the genesis of the Albanian musical tradition as well as with differentiation of many musical streams existing today one by another from the poit of view of their forms and functions. It is also interested in interpreters or composers of this music and their „popularity“ with various groups of Kosovo-Albanian society. Last but not least, it analyses, besides the musical aspects, also the texts that convincingly reflect how the Kosovo—Albanians perceive themselves, the past events and also other partakers of older and recent history. From this it is clear that here we don't face only a revived Albanian nationalism, but also the shaping of the perception of distinctiveness of „Kosovars“ as a peculiar cultural and political entity.
Among the important works of local his tory of the end of the 19th century belongs also a huge German work „Die österreichisch-ungarische Monarchie in Wort und Bild“ that, besides demographic, geographic, historical or economical tractates contains also ethnographic studies. It also contains a volume dedicated to Moravia and Silesia, two multiethnic regions dominated by Czech and German inhabitants (in Silesia also the Poles played an important role). The book thus deals not only with two independent political units, but also with two nations whose mutual relations were certainly problematic at the time of the publication of this work. It seems that also in this book manifested itself the contemporary national barrier between the Czechs and the Germans, including the specialists on ethnography. In the book chapters written by renowned Czech authors, at the time at the peak of their Scientific career — František Bartoš, Josef Kivana or Vincenc Prásek. On the other hand, the authors of the ethnographic chapters about the German ethnic group are not that well known today. They didn't publish in the Czech ethnographic periodicals of the time, their works are not referred upon by their Czech colleagues. But the book as a whole is certainly well-arranged and balanced. The very ethnographical chapters provoke some doubts, because they reflect some of thepoliticalproblems of the time. In the very structure of these important chapters we can see a dominant role that the initiator s of the book ascribed to the German nation. Although it was less numerous and its folk culture and its folk culture could not be considered as a modelfor the folk culture ofother nation groups, the chapters on German folk culture precede chapters dedicated to the Czechs, resp. the Poles. The Czech nation is uniformly named „Slavic“, a fact that through its political conservatism certainly should have provoked the bad blood of the Czech patriotic circles. Also, the book was written in the particularly sensitive period ofrising discontent not only among the Czechs and the Germans, but also the Czech political representation and the leadership of the Habsburk Empire and its political élite.